Jonathan Case makes an impressive and witty debut in Dear Creature, a funny and moving tale of deep-sea wit and maybe a little gore. Well, the gore is more implied.
 
Grue lives under the sea, “fishing” for prey on the surface. He specializes in catching young doofuses (he casts a six-pack of beer on the waves, waits for a dense young man to come attempt to grab it, and presto—dinner). He’s also managed to learn Shakespeare under the sea, and now he wants more. He doesn’t know what, for sure, but he knows he wants something else. Like love.
 
Grue meets the woman who had been putting all those Shakespearean lines into bottles and casting them on the water, and love blossoms. But, given that Grue is a monster, there are bound to be a few snags.
 
The whole thing is wildly difficult to describe and the story incorporates so many elements that there’s just no reasonable way it should make any sense or reach a satisfying level of storytelling—yet it does. Spectacularly so, as a matter of fact.